Why there has been a silence on this blog over the last few months

Last week I was asked why there has been a silence on my blog over the last few months.
The reason is rather simple: I’m putting a lot of time in my education, several customers and a special project I’ve been working on.
I hope to be able to release this somewhere in the near future… more information I’ll make available at the appropriate times.

But, these were not the main reasons.
I recently learned that some people took advantage of my willingness to help others.
There are two separate occasions I want to point out.

1) I learned that someone that emailed me directly with questions, which I gladly answered and helped him with his scripting endeavors, basically took my code, put his name under it and charged his customer for several days of work. Note that this was only a 80 lines of code, including the help, but it’s about the principle of the thing.
How I know this? I’m currently at that same customer for a different job! I dove into my email and made a timeline. It seems that he emailed me the moment he got the job, I emailed him later that afternoon with the script, and two and a half day later he gave the script to the customer, charging three days of work for it.
Now, I wouldn’t mind if it also involved testing,

2) My AD Health Check. Same thing as number one, but now it involves a system integrator from my own company. They use my script to generate the documentation, again which I have no problem with… that’s why I wrote and shared it!
What I do have a problem with is the fact that they, when delivering the document to the customer, put their own logo in it and removed all references and credits to me.
But wait, it gets better. One of the admins at this customer knew about my script. He called the system integrator in the fact that they were using my script, yet they denied it. They told him that they worked hard on the script and it was their property. So this morning I drove to this company and called them on it.
One of their managers sat down with me and he called one of their consultants. We put both my and his laptop next to each other and guess what: They were using my script.
The manager gave me many, many apologies and the IT Pro responsible for this would be given a strong talking to by him, as he promised me.
Too bad he wouldn’t give me his name, else I would have gladly nailed him to a public cross.

Questions form the community
I love them. So I will continue answering them.
However, I’ve learned from my experience. I will not provide lines and lines of code anymore.
I will give you advice, show a path, but I will not (anymore) walk the path for you.
Freebies are over!

So where is v2 of my AD Health Check script?
I was planning to release it on the 12th of March, which is my birthday, but after all of this I’ve decided not to do it.
v1 I will continue to support, and when Microsoft changes things in the Active Directory product, I will adapt the script to those changes.
For the future, I will not expand on the features of the AD Health Check script. I will not stand for companies making money and taking credit for this work.
I do this for the community, not to make others rich. I don’t ask money for the script, so when others use my script and do ask money for it, they manage to seriously piss me off.
Instead, I’ve decided not to make it a script, but a full blown application.

Yes, that’s the special project I’ve been working on.
Me, an IT Pro, is going Dev.
I will not become a developer, I will never ever call myself a developer. I’m learning it as I go, and the quality will probably leave room for improvement.
I’m an admin/consultant at heart and will always remain so.
However, this seems to be the only way to protect credits. Or when companies are getting profit from it, it allows me to get some as well.
Just to be clear: If people and companies would have used the script as intended, for and from the community, I would not have had any issues with it whatsoever.

I have yet to think about the pricing and licensing model, but I didn’t start working in IT to become a billionaire.
So don’t worry, I will not be charging lots of money for it.

8 comments

Although it wouldn’t hurt anyone to give credits where credits due this is all a bit overdone. You really didn’t expect that when a company delivers documentation to a customer they would leave your logo and name on it right? This is exactly why you won’t see my name in the documentation script for NetScaler. Instead of this oe look at this I’m screwed reaction you could just ask someone what the intentions of the code you’re producing are and if it’s not community related agree on a fee first? And by the way I’ve read some recent posts and none of them state anything about credits to someone else?

Ouuffff. That hurts my friend. I know what you having going through, even though it seems that it has gone a bit far there. the community is all about sharing and helping each other out.But credit must be given to the ones who initialy started that specefic project.

to bad you got this experience. that people take advantage of your good work. It makes the Open-source commun sick and small because now we lose one more great tech pro. are you thinking about stepping to some form of law institution. Or leave it as it is. Regards your best mate Lars

It’s a shame it had to come to this.
Made me think what I did with scripts you helped me with, but I’m pretty sure you aren’t talking about me 🙂

It’s funny how you helped me startup my PowerShell knowledge, and now that I know my way and how to search Google to help me out, I somehow manage to always find your site in the search results. I guess I really did learn from one of the masters.

I’m still very gratefull for all your time and effort the past years!
Thank you!

Hi Stefan,
Long time no talk! Hope you’re doing well at your new project 🙂
The post wasn’t intended for you. In the mean time I’ve been contacted by the guy from the system integrator and he apologized so for me there is no need to go any further.
This situation did gave me a chance to think about a few things. Although deciding the transform the ADHC script to a licensed product was grown out of frustration, i think it’s a good choice nevertheless 🙂
Next to that, I’m learning something new (developing software) which brings me joy… and having fun is what it’s all about in life 🙂
Jeff.

How is your project going on a version 2 of AD Health check ?
you where talking about it on the last dupsug that the released is most likely at the end of 2015.
is this still on your scope or do you have a new time line in mind for the release of it.

the current one is still working perfect and gives me a lot of information about the AD structure and health.
keep up to good work ant thans for all your great work so far 🙂
Kind Regards